RPN-SAN storage question.
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DISCLAIMER: I'm very much a beginner student and just curious.
https://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/rpn-san
My speculation is that this storage can be added to any virtual machine regardless of who provides the VM. I'm sure it requires some specific hardware compatibility, it mentions iSCSI and RPN... I have googled these terms and am researching on my own. I've also taken a look at their limited documentation here: http://documentation.online.net/fr/serveur-dedie/tutoriel/rpn-san
I figure it couldn't hurt to ask the forum and see if anyone familiar with these technologies could weigh in on my speculations; to address limitations or possibly spare me from seeking a dead-end.I'm interested in this because, in my mind, this could eliminate disk-performance issues on "bargain" hosting providers. (Whether a more cost-effective approach exists isn't my concern, at this point)
The biggest issue I foresee is getting the VM to boot from the RPN-SAN disk and have it ignore the provided (inferior) storage.
Any comments?
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Are you asking if you can use this SAN with a VPS you might buy from say Vultr? Or Digital Ocean?
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@papercape It's block storage presented over the internet. To me it's a solution looking for a problem.
How it connects is conceptually simple, it's just block storage and you'd configure it like any other iSCSI storage. To use it as a system disk, you would need to run the installation routine yourself.
Performance wise, I don't see how this could possibly make sense. You'd be relying on the internet link for your system storage. How in the world is any internet link going to be faster than access to local resources? Any reasonable host will have much faster local storage. (That's not to say we don't know of unreasonable hosting companies.)
I have an account at Digital Ocean, and now Ram Node as well. My VPS at Ram Node is on the slowest storage tier they offer, and it's not the local storage that is the slowest link in the chain (that tends to be the local internet connection). Using it at both Digital Ocean and Ram Node would most likely cause issues with network utilization. Ram Node still limits available monthly transfer volume as well, which could become a problem.
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@travisdh1 said:
Performance wise, I don't see how this could possibly make sense. You'd be relying on the internet link for your system storage. How in the world is any internet link going to be faster than access to local resources? Any reasonable host will have much faster local storage. (That's not to say we don't know of unreasonable hosting companies.)
Well... The provided disk averages much slower than the network. So, I'm definitely with an unreasonable host.
Thanks for the explanation. It sounds like my expectations for how this would perform are unrealistic.
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@papercape said:
Well... The provided disk averages much slower than the network. So, I'm definitely with an unreasonable host.
Have you actually measured the performance of both? What their physical internet connection is compared to how much is actually available for you to use are two different things. If the actual performance of the internet connection outpaces the storage, then I think we know where they're cutting corners.
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@travisdh1 I've done so with a benchmark tool, it seems to run several redundant tests on the disk and then another set of tests for network speeds. The "disk IO" output value is 5.6mb/s, 6mb/s, and 4.3mb/s. The network connects to Hong Kong (slowest speed) at 30mb/s and Ontario (highest speed) at 120mb/s.
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@papercape said:
@travisdh1 I've done so with a benchmark tool, it seems to run several redundant tests on the disk and then another set of tests for network speeds. The "disk IO" output value is 5.6mb/s, 6mb/s, and 4.3mb/s. The network connects to Hong Kong (slowest speed) at 30mb/s and Ontario (highest speed) at 120mb/s.
Hrm, even if you have Megabits and Megabytes messed up in the worst case condition, that's just bad. A network share on the local gigabit network here will transfer at ~120MB/sec. Even the slowest single drive should be much faster than that today. I'd honestly open a support ticket and see if they can tell you what's up.
